Announced on February 1st, Google Art Project digitally displays over 1000 works of art from museums like the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Florence's Uffizi Gallery, the Tate Britain, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, and many more. You can do a Google Street View-style walk through of the galleries, make your own collections from the works on display, and the level of detail is mind-blowing (you can even zoom in one eye in Rembrandt's Night Watch - they won't let you get that close in the museum!).
Seriously, getting this close just wouldn't happen.Artist information, data about the work itself, and links to more works by that artist are provided when you click on the white "i" information icon on the right side of the screen.
My one issue with this site is the inability to search among all of the galleries. For example, one of the art club members wanted to see something by pointillist Georges Seurat and I could not find a way to search for his works in all the museums contained in Art Project. However, a work-around would be to do a Google site search, such as "Seurat site:googleartproject.com" in the main Google web search.
That one gripe notwithstanding, it is a wonderful resource that allows detailed viewing of artwork for anyone with an internet connection, and hopefully the coming months will bring even more artwork and galleries.
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